Monthly Development Update - April 30th, 2013

Hi guys, it's been a couple of months since we spoke (apologies for missing last month's update) and plenty has been going on in Anarchy Online during this time.

Firstly, we have merged to a single server, which has boosted activity and population significantly. This is a good for the health of the game going forward by ensuring that people are always around to group with (or fight against).

A reminder to people who want maximum character slots - if you are a subscriber during the next patch you will receive 12 character slots, else the number will be 10 for future subscribers and 8 for froob accounts.

Genele has been working incredibly hard on both the new player experience and revamps to the item shop - including removing the multiple tiers of old reward systems (such as phasefront points) and moving them into the store where they will be more easily accessible.

In addition, the current update on Testlive contains changes to various mobs in Rubi-Ka which should improve the leveling experience overall. Hecklers are no longer the only the game in town.

Work on the engine continues, and while the momentum was affected by the restructuring, everything is back in place so that work can continue. As Macrosun posted here http://forums.anarchyonline.com/showthread.php?t=605216 the new engine has been tested against the live environment with some success.

There is still plenty of work to be done. Once we have fully deployable internal versions of the engine, it will be in the hands of QA who will break it, break it and then break it some more. We will need to do art and animation cleanup work as well as fixing areas of the world that need touching up.

The current roadmap has us working towards a cautious goal of having the engine in an open beta state, later in the year. How long it will remain in that state, will depend on the feedback we receive from all of the different hardware configurations out there, and how well it runs for them.

I'll leave you today with a few more screenshots from the new engine. Cheers, Joel Creative Director